


The Underworld Is Empty

by TheseusInTheMaze



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Gen, change, dead gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 22:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14318334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/pseuds/TheseusInTheMaze
Summary: When the last soul that was kept in the underworld is forgotten, Persephone leaves for the last time.





	The Underworld Is Empty

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this myth on my mind for the last few days. This is a short little thing, but I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> Happy birthday, Mantis!

Hades has been dead for a long time now.

It was a slow, lingering death, but Persephone held his hand through it.

Her own mother… she didn’t know what had happened to her mother.

The last time she’d seen Demeter, the grain goddess had been out of her mind, stoned on who knew how many herbicides, pesticides, her skin changing from the inside out, rotting like the soil was.

But Hades was gone now - the underworld had emptied out eons before, when those who remembered the ones wandering under the ground had died. 

Leaving… 

Persephone, wandering through the vast, lonely, empty caverns. 

It was ghostly, seeing it so empty - in a weird way, it was less eerie than when the souls had started to fade. 

One last man had held on - some old fisherman, with skin like leather, who spoke in an old, dead language, almost as old as the language of the dead. 

She walked to the surface world, and she was still young - faded, like a rock that’s been under a stream, but still young, because people will forever believe in the spring, even if it wasn’t the spring that they remembered. 

Or maybe she stayed on for some other reason - the ways of mortals were confusing, and her own existence was equally confusing. 

She existed. 

She continued to exist. 

She missed her husband - their love had been a complicated one, but it had blossomed into… something. Some kind of fruit that would poison if not prepared right, but yielded a deep, bitter wine that left you satisfied. 

Cerberus had run off a long time ago - she whistled for him sometimes, in hopes of hearing the returning bark, but… nothing. 

The world was so much _louder_ \- louder in a way she didn’t expect.

She could hear their thoughts, their dreams.

The world was dying… or was it being born again?

She ran into foreign gods - gods with circuitry behind their eyes, gods with the heads of animals that were older than her, and clung on out of some kind of stubbornness. 

Flowers still bloomed when she passed - slower than the old days, admittedly, but they were still there.

She could hear their dreams.

She walked through concrete and broken glass, and her bare feet were cut up - she bled gold ichor, and it leaked into those places, and back into the earth.

Was Gaia still alive?

Had she become nothing but earth?

They sold pomegranates the way they always had - stacked in front of stores - and nobody noticed when she took one in her hand, used her knife to cut it open, remove the seeds from the pith. 

Hades had given her that gift - when his name had changed, and the platinum of it was heavy and warm in her hand. 

There was a stranger walking by her - they were tall, their face was gaunt, and it flickered constantly. 

She glanced into his face idly - another immortal, another not-dead god wandering through the world - and there was the glint of her husband’s eye.

Wait. 

She raised her voice - not the one in her throat, but the one in her mind. 

She called to him, and he looked over at her, with her husband’s eyes, with her mother’s hair, with the faces of all the dead that had streamed before her and her husband’s throne, lo those many years ago. There were faces older than that - she saw glimpses of animals, of creatures that didn’t have names, just features. Of the flicker of firelight, and the fear of the dark. 

Here was the being made of dead gods, dead mortals, and who were they? 

She greeted him, in the manner that was common for gods in those old days.

She didn’t remember it entirely - it had been so long since she’d seen someone like her, inasmuch as gods can ever be like each other. 

They put a hand on her shoulder, and the sheer jolt of power left her staggering - the tree behind her burst into exuberant, spontaneous bloom, and she was young again for a moment - a goddess of death, a goddess of spring. 

But she wasn’t… she wasn’t the goddess she was. 

She looked into the face of whoever-they-were, and she was made anew, as all dead gods become new, as the dead become the soil that becomes the living. 

The goddess, who had once been pulled underground on a great chariot, ate a great, greedy handful of pomegranate seeds, and she laughed to the changing sky.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had the phrase "dead gods" rattling around through my head for a while - I thought I'd do something with it, finally. I'm not sure if I'm done with it quite yet, but it's... something.


End file.
